Museumizing trauma

Social politics and memory after the 2005 evacuation of the Jewish communities of Gaza

Bibliographic Data

ID12905422
AuthorsBar Zecharya (corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume9
Issue4
Pages471-487
Publication date2015-08-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1750698015601180
OpenAlexW2484751585
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited18

A provocative example of the relation between memory/memorializing and social transformation in a conflict area, the Museum of Gush Katif in Jerusalem is a private institution with the mission of memorializing the settlement-communities of the Gaza Strip (known to its residents as Gush Katif) and their evacuation by the Israeli Defense Forces in the summer of 2005. The museum presents an alternative narrative to that of the government and mainstream Israeli society, aims to foster sympathy for the evacuees and aspires to lead the viewer to identify with the settlements in order to prevent future evacuations. Its activities, both educational and political, bring it into contact with both religious and secular elements of Israeli society, as well as internationally, turning the museum into not only a site of cultural and political resistance but a cultural symbol in and of itself. This article explores the museum, and the process of remembering that it embodies, from a number of viewpoints. One, the way the museum evokes authoritative symbols from multiple and contrasting sources in order to frame contemporary events—and at the same time affecting the way those symbols are understood; two, the social makeup of the museum’s founders and organizers, seen as an expression of the changing alliances and political stances of cultural subgroups in Israeli society and thus the continued evolution of strategies of remembering; and three, the role of the Museum of Gush Katif as an “alternative museum” seen in the light of comparison with other examples of the category, certainly a provocative example, sometimes corroborating and sometimes complicating the term

Art · Collective memory · Literature · Mainstream · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sympathy · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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